


at last can grant a name

by sugarybowl



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, because a chunk of this happens in the afterlife, but it's gonna be weird, justice for jennifer, so if you don't want him to be redeemed probably don't read this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-03-05 16:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18832387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: It had not occurred to Quentin until then that everyone he had loved and lost up until the time of his own death had been related to him in some way.





	1. Summers of Fillory

The afterlife ran kind of like a sitcom in that time passed in convenient inconsistent ways and everyone that ever mattered to you was only a short stroll away, so long as they had died. Because time was strange, Quentin knew that eventually all of his friends would meet him there, but time _ was _ strange and it had been maybe an hour or a hundred years and still none of them were there. This made him happy and sad in that non vital way that could not be experienced if you hadn’t ‘crossed the veil’ and so he didn’t try. Instead, he waited, and enjoyed the pleasant constant company of his family. 

 

It had not occurred to Quentin until then that everyone he had loved and lost up until the time of his own death had been related to him in some way. And because the universe and the timeline of his life were strange, he was always meeting great-great grandchildren and great-great-great grandchildren every not-quite-day. 

 

“Your family is so beautiful, Quentin,” his father said as they gardened side by side, “I’m so proud.”

 

“It’s... I had a lifetime with Ari and Teddy and...and Eliot. But then I got here and I can see how far and how long our little family went and… I’m proud too.”

 

A few days or years into his time in the afterlife a new visitor came. Teddy and Arielle embraced her and like so many, Quentin assumed she was family. She was taller than anyone related to him probably should be, but maybe she was someone’s wife or a beloved friend. Her dark dark curls framed wide kind eyes that were clever like knives and she looked at him with a smile that would look wicked if it were not so sincere. 

 

“Quentin,” she said to him and knelt beside him with an impressive amount of grace, “it is so wonderful and terrible to see you again.”

 

“Yeah I um, could have done with waiting a bit longer but hey. Um, are you - Teddy’s?”

 

“I am not,” she said as she laid a hand on his, “my name is Summers.”

 

“Summers is a special member of the household,” Arielle said to him as she came to sit beside them and trail her fingers over the girls cheek in that motherly way.

 

“Summers is a constant,” Teddy said, “see I only happen in...what three lifetimes? Four? Summers is always there in some way.”

 

“Does everyone remember their past lives?” Quentin asked, “why can’t I?”

 

“Your soul isn’t at peace,” Summers answered, “nor have the living unclenched their hearts from around it. So you’re kind of...a coin mid toss in the air.”

 

“Who are you?”

 

“Oh, I have been so many things. A fugitive, an orphan, a princess; sometimes when I am very lucky I live to be queen. In your life I was a tragedy.” 

 

“Summers is the only true born Queen of Fillory, the daughter of a god anointed monarch and a native warrior. She was promised. But the promise isn’t always kept. Still - her mother and father continue to journey in life and so we look after her. We are the only family she has.”

 

“You’re Eliot and Fen’s daughter,” finally stupidly late on the uptake, Quentin leaned toward her “how do you know me?”

 

“I told you dad,” Teddy reminded him, “she’s lived many many lives.”

 

“In the most beautiful ones, our family is together in Fillory and I am raised on stories of strong women real and made up. Buffy the vampire slayer,” she laughs, “or Arielle the beloved of kings. In the saddest, for me at least, I grow up in an empty castle surrounded by the echoes of my family. There was a quiet life of grief and hope once, the castle was stormed and you hid me away and you didn’t let me look but I could smell the copper around us as you ran with me in your arms. We lived as peasants for the rest of our lives, but every night you told me that I was a High King in my blood like my father before me, the hope of Fillory as my mother had been.”

 

And though Quentin cannot remember, he imagined and saw it clearly, running from the horror of seeing everyone he loved dead with his lover’s child in his arms. Raising her as they had raised Teddy in the quiet peace of the middle of nowhere, telling her stories. Reminding her that she was the child of kings and queens. He leaned further and pressed a kiss to her forehead and she was his, as his as Teddy and his girls, as his as Arielle was, as his as Eliot had been. 

 

Summers joined his days and told him stories of Fillories that were, of the grand birthday parties Eliot had orchestrated for her, of Fen’s sweet and fierce love, of Margo’s fight for Summers’ place as Crown princess. She told him about lessons with Alice and Josh, because her parents thought her education should hold a fine balance of pessimistic realism and creative escapism. 

 

Teddy told him about the birth of each of his great grandchildren in adventurous detail, about his little school of music and magic that grew and grew, about visiting Whitespire once in his old age, with the secret of his heritage tucked in his heart. 

 

One endless evening, when everyone around him is smiling and humming, he finds that the taste of peach cobbler still makes a sob bubble up in his chest and wonders not for the first time if his coin will ever fall from its constant toss. Just then the ground around them rumbles, the peace of the quiet sunset perturbed as everyone rose and around him and Arielle. In that moment he realized - ridiculously late on the uptake - that he was the patriarch of every one of the men, women, and (thankfully few) children around him. That in a moment like this, a moment that in their promised eternal peace should never be happening, they came to him for protection. 

 

A chasm had opened between their picnic and their never-ending lane of homes and it was black and white and empty. Quentin shook with the terror and the screaming that wasn’t supposed to follow him because it was supposed to be over, he was supposed to be done. 

 

He felt Arielle’s hand in his own and he pulled Teddy back from stepping forward toward the emptiness. But he couldn’t stop Summers because she was too fast and too Eliot and he saw him in her, saw him stand at the end of the world and pull a trigger, saw him on the forest floor with an ax in his chest and the blood blood blood seeping away. 

 

“Summers!” he screamed and held tighter on to his son because he could not reach her. 

 

“It’s a child,” she called over her shoulder, “it’s a little boy.”

 

“No it isn’t,” Quentin said and finally his feet listened to him, and he ran toward the edge, “no it isn’t, get away from it.”

 

“Quentin?” the little boy with the burning eyes called up to him from the bottom of an endless well, “Will you play with me?”


	2. The Dread Iron Queen

“Get back to your brother,” Quentin said, feeling old and sick in his heart and angry and all of the things he shouldn’t feel in the godforsaken afterlife, “Summers get back to your brother right now.”

 

“He could be my brother,” she answered, looking down at the thing with pity in her eyes. But she did as she was told because he was weary and angry in a way she could not be and he knew that if he looked back he would find all of them looking on in interest and curiosity without fear or apprehension. What was there to fear, after all, they were already dead. Already at peace.

 

“Why are you here?” he asked the child shaped thing at the bottom of the schism in the ground, “I ended this. I died to end this.”

 

“You died because you were scared,” he answered and then pouted, “that’s why you do everything. Because you’re scared.”

 

“No I was brave,” Quentin said with certainty he never really felt, “I was brave and I banished you at The Seam and you were never supposed to -”

 

“You can’t banish me, Quentin I am stronger than you,” he said, still sitting and pouting but sounding exasperated as if Quentin were the five year old in this dialogue, “but my sister could.”

 

“Your sister sent you here,” Quentin repeated. But he was distracted by how close the monster seemed, no longer at the bottom of a well but more like sitting forlorn inside a small ditch. 

 

“My sister sent me away,” he said, “she did not want humans or Starbucks or trees. She said we had a whole world to build as we wished and I kept asking for humans and Starbucks and trees. So she sent me away. She banished me. Because she’s stronger than me and she didn’t want me. Like my parents didn’t want me. Why won’t anyone want me?”

 

And Quentin wanted to say  _ ‘because you are a monster’ _ or  _ ‘because you are an abomination’ _ or  _ ‘because you want and want and take and take and you use and possess and you choke and you kill kill kill with childlike glee’ _ . But he didn’t say any of those things. He only sat at the edge of creation in the world beyond the world and watched a little boy with hell in his eyes cry at his feet.

 

“This is pretty,” he said, now sitting in front of him. The chasm that had appeared gone just as suddenly, the peace of their forever restored. Except for this. Except for him. 

 

“Yes,” he answered, tired and scared and all of the things a dead man should not be, “yes it is.”

 

“Who are they?”

 

“They’re my family.”

 

“Oh,” he said simply, as he became interested in the ground beneath them, “family is the worst.”

 

“Not mine,” Quentin said as he looked over to them, “so stay away from them.”

 

He looked into Quentin’s eyes and Quentin noticed then, the fire in those child’s eyes was only a smolder.

 

“You don’t want me either, do you Quentin. That’s why you threw me away in that stupid bottle and you died in that stupid way.”

 

They stared at one another in a silence that stretched out for moments or ages until it was unceremoniously broken. 

 

“This is the loudest,” a startling and ironically loud voice boomed above them, “most hectic and unpeaceful stretch of afterlife in this gods damned Meadow. Who is this?”

 

And Quentin, he had never met Hades, but it was maybe a thing of the Underworld to know yourself in the presence of its king. So he did not say  _ ‘a monster that your parents made’ _ or  _ ‘the thing I died to vanquish’ _ . Instead he said, “This is who killed your wife.”

 

Quentin felt shame then, which he also thought he should not be feeling in this supposedly perfect afterlife. He could not look the god in the eye so he looked at his perfect suit instead and at the honeybee that crawled over his lapel with impunity. Hades looked on Quentin and then at the boy between them and then at the family of curiously interested and gossiping but otherwise calm Coldwater-Waughs and said, “That is fascinating seeing as my wife is not dead.”

 

“That’s funny,” the boy-monster said, “I really did kill her.”

 

“Oh I am certain you tried, you wretched little thing, but I am not the firstborn for nothing. She is the Iron Queen, the beloved of Death. She cannot die. You did upset her, but then you have upset pretty much everyone.”

 

Then he coaxed the honeybee from his lapel and set it on his palm and then the gentle hand of a woman was there instead and she looked down on them with more unsettling calm. 

 

“Oh look Quentin,” the boy-monster said, “I didn’t kill her.”

 

“You are making a racket,” Hades chided again, “the Meadows is meant to be the calmest place in the realm.”

 

“Quentin,” Persephone said as she sat on the ground beside them while her husband continued to hover over them, “Penny assured me you were at peace when you crossed over.”

 

“Penny assured me everything would be okay once I did. And it is. It was I mean - I’m happy here I’m-”

 

“No you aren’t,” an absolute chorus of tratorious family members called out behind him. Arielle came forward and took a seat beside them and all of a sudden it was a picnic again. His dead wife and the god and goddess of death and the monster at the end of the world.

 

“You aren’t at peace,” Arielle said as she took his hand, “and we have tried but it is obvious that you still ache and hurt and want. It isn’t your time yet.”

 

“And I agree with you,” he sighed, “but I am very freaking dead.”

 

“You cannot stay,” Hades said from where he stood resolute in not joining their casual stance, “you cannot be here all full of want and ache, it throws off the ambiance of the place to say nothing of  _ him _ .”

 

With a sweep of his hand the monster-child fell over and for a moment, a wild moment, Quentin thought it was dead. But he breathed in and out in perfect peace, his fiery eyes hidden. 

 

“Well then it’s perfectly simple,” Arielle said with a grin, “Quentin must live again. Until he has lived a life he can die at peace with. And ...maybe you can take  _ him _ \- you are childless if it’s true what the tales say.”

 

“That isn’t remotely how anything works,” Hades explained.

 

“Husband,” the Lady finally said, “perhaps a deal could be made. Deals are such an easy way to fix a mess.”

 

“What kind of deal,” Quentin asked, and he felt thrill and hope and anticipation which perhaps are also not things you feel if you are a soul at peace in the Underworld. 

 

“Perhaps we can grant you life as a… master of sorts. For the godschild of course.”

 

“I uhm - what?”

 

“Say more,” Arielle asked the Queen of the Dead as if perhaps requesting the details of a particularly juicy piece of gossip.

 

Persephone reached out and stroked her gentle fingers through the dark curls of the creature that very much tried to kill her and smiled.

 

“I have a place for him but he is not ready for it. Quentin can help him in this.”

 

“And how exactly am I supposed to help him?”

 

“You’ll have to love him,” Arielle said as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

 

“You will have to teach him the lesson that you so excellently learned,” Persephone added, “the beauty of all life. So he may learn to cherish it. But I will share this burden with you, a reparation for your sacrifice and for the mistakes of the old gods. He will be train beside me during my time in the throne below, and when I come up with the Spring he will be in your care.” 

 

“So you’ll give me my life back,” Quentin says slowly, “if I love and care for the thing that cost me my life in the first place.”

 

“Only for half the year, Quentin. And it might help, peach, if you don’t call him a thing,” Arielle whispered with a kiss to his temple, “take the deal, my love. Come back to me as you came to me then, together.”

 

“He will need a sibling,” an exhausted sigh finally comes from Hades, “he was made to be half of a pair. If you send him alone he will continue as he has been, a creature of destruction.”

 

“Very well,” Persephone agreed, “Quentin, choose one of your kin to raise up beside him.”

 

“You want me to pick someone to bring back from the dead.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Are you insane.”

 

“Quentin, honestly,” Arielle groaned beside him before she stood, “Theodore, Summers - come here.”

 

“You want me to choose which of them gets to live? You can’t be serious, there is a whole movie about this.”

 

“No one is going to ask you, Quentin, Ember’s ass you’re conceited. Teddy, Summers, Quentin is going back to your father where he belongs. He must take one of his kin back with him for the whole thing to work out - would either of you like to go with him?”

 

“Dad this is amazing,” Teddy said with a wide grin and a wicked spark in his eyes, “Summers please tell papa how much we miss him and that we don’t want to see any of you here for a very long time.”

 

“I can’t wait to see Earth,” Summers said without pause, “so many lives, can you believe I’ve not been once?”

 

“You know I have heard it is unpopular to say this now but women, goddess or mortal alike, are conniving creatures,” Hades lamented, “how long have the two of you had this deal worked out?”

 

Persephone rolled her eyes, “I always listen to a plea from Our Lady of the Trees. She left the details up to me.”

 

“Julia knew you were alive?”

 

“No. She did not. Her faith is a wondrous thing. Make sure she teaches him that,” she said motioning at the sleeping child on the ground. 

 

“Quentin,” his father called from in front of the gathered crowd, “you’ve got this son. You’ve already made it once.”

 

Quentin smiled, shaky and wet and feeling very much alive as Teddy placed the sleeping boy-thing-monster-ward-godchild in Quentin’s arms, as Arielle kissed him long and sweet, as Summers looking just as young as the sleeping one did took his hand and looked all the way up at him with all that terrifyingly beautiful hope in her eyes.

 

"Come along then," Hades said as a doorway, white and bright as the one he had crossed appeared before them now, "let's see if we can get some peace and quiet now."


	3. His Highness the Prince Dowager

“So you’re going to have to marry Fen,” Josh said, but only after Margo had bitten deep into the rinberry cheesecake he had brought with him.

 

“I beg your fucking pardon,” she said around the creamy bite in her mouth.

 

“The only way we’ve found to abolish a banishment is marriage to a sitting monarch,” he explained, dabbing at the berry juice poking out of the corner of Margo’s lips. 

 

“You’re joking.”

 

“In theory you could marry Alice,” he said instead as he took a seat beside her, “but I have the feeling that if we want to avoid regicide it would be better if you married Fen. And we haven't really heard much from her since she and Julia tried that super inadvisable spell so...”

 

Margo didn’t say anything at all, which was in its own way very disturbing. 

 

Josh smiled in the saddest way and kept his eyes on her, “I’d just like the record to state that I would marry the fuck out of you, Margo Hanson, but I don’t have a crown to give you and that’s what you deserve. So I’m happy to be your noble side piece for the rest of our days. Maybe we’ll have a couple of bastards. It’ll be great.”

 

She sighed and cuddled closer to him in a silent acceptance of his insane proposal well, no one had to get it but them. 

 

“What about Eliot?”

 

“Eliot is already married to Fen,” Josh said as if maybe she'd forgotten, “and no longer a sitting monarch in his own right. He is, however, eligible for another title. Which we should probably not tell him about.”

 

“I’m too sad and tired for the cloak and dagger,” she snapped.

 

“Okay well remember the whole 50 years that didn’t happen but totally did happen which is why Eliot won’t really leave his room or talk to people or wear anything but black anymore?”

 

“I’m aware.”

 

“Well, so is Fillory. The land recognizes his civil union to Quentin as like a legit valid marriage. So while he is Prince Consort to High King Fen he is also Prince Dowager to King Quentin.   

 

“Well damn, double prince. You’re right though," she bit her lip, "we should maybe phrase that carefully."

 

“Fen has a whole speech planned. Still, you can’t marry Eliot. I mean you can if you want - but it won’t do anything for your banishment.”

 

“What are we talking about,” a sad tired voice said from somewhere above them. The Monster, gone as it was, had left vestiges in Eliot. One of which was the tendency to appear suddenly and without notice.

 

“Apparently to get back to Fillory I have to marry Fen, do you want to be sister-wives with me?”

 

Eliot bit at his thumb nail and sighed. 

 

“I’m trying this new thing where I make an effort to be a good husband,” he said, in that new strange quiet way of his, “and a good friend. And you two marrying each other will only make you both miserable. She’s got enough of a spousal burden with me.”

 

“I’d be an excellent fucking wife, El.”

 

“Of course you will honey," he said as he stood before somehow impossibly trying to make himself small, "to someone you love. When you want to. We’ll figure something out.”

 

“So you’re feeling better?”

 

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, Bambi,” he said simply.

 

Margo kissed his hand before he turned back to his room no doubt to go find another monochromatic outfit to take to Fillory.

 

“Take care of him,” she commanded with her most _will-cut-you_ expression before leaning in to kiss Josh more tenderly than she would ever admit. 

 

“I’ll make sure he eats,” was all that Josh could honestly promise. 

 

She texted Penny Twenty-Three and he and Julia showed up in a moment. 

 

Margo tried not to roll her eyes, but if Eliot had gone down the spiral after Quentin, Julia had gone off the rails. Since Julia became a constant ball of determined  _ “we need to get Quentin back”  _ energy, it was always troublesome to have her and Mr.  _ “the love of my life is dead” _ in the same space. Julia couldn’t stand that Eliot had given up and Eliot couldn’t stand that Julia wouldn’t let it alone. 

 

Twenty-Three, who understood the absolute stab in the eye that hope could be when the love of your life was dead but who also thought that the sun shone out of Julia’s every orifice, ended up as the best suited to mediate Julia-Eliot interactions. He was also a lot more nice about being their main Uber ride to and from Fillory.

 

“Two for Whitespire,” he said, reading off the text that Margo had sent.

 

“So he’s giving up on Earth altogether then,” Julia muttered. 

 

Margo didn’t say anything to defend Eliot anymore, because Eliot hated that more than he hated fighting with Julia himself, but she did allow herself to glare. 

 

“Well I left my whole universal timeline so,” Penny Twenty-Three shrugged, “can’t really judge him there.”

 

“He’s going to help us unbanish Margo,” Josh offered and he and Twenty-Three had a moment of silent  _ everything-sucks-but-we-have-to-try _ . 

 

“You know you don’t have the market cornered on being fucking pissed he’s dead, Julia,” Margo said half a minute later after she contained as much of her annoyance as she could for the day, “and you have to stop torturing El over it.”

 

“I’m not… I’m not trying to punish Eliot for anything. But I am not giving up and I need things from...I thought Alice could help and then she couldn’t and you know, that broke her heart. He doesn’t have the exclusive rights either.”

 

“I know,” Margo nodded, “I know. I get it. And you have every right to die on that hill but you’re not going to crucify Eliot on it. I won't let you.”

 

Julia nodded and once Eliot came into the room it was as quiet and tense as it ever was but at least neither of them seemed to glare. 

 

“Eliot before you go I need one thing from you and I know that it’s going to suck but… but I’m going ask anyway. Because there’s a chance and as long as there’s a chance that comes first for me.”

 

“I wish you’d stop saying things like there’s a chance, but sure. Ask away. What is it, blood? Tears? One good memory?”

 

“No," she said quietly, "I need a name.”

 

Eliot’s jaw worked like he knew somehow what was coming next even though it caught Margo completely off guard.

 

“His wife - from then? That timeline? I need her name.”

 

Eliot looked very much like he wasn’t going to answer as he realigned and buttoned his coat, as he wrapped his hand very purposefully around his cane and huffed out like the air in his lungs pained him.

 

“Arielle,” he said, as he moved toward and leaned shamelessly on Josh with the pain of every step, “Her name was Arielle."

 

“Thank you,” Julia whispered and then she nodded to Penny to move forward and take the other two men away. 

 

“Is there really a chance?” Margo asked, once the room was empty except for the two of them. 

 

“No,” Julia said quietly, “not really. So I’m just have to pray.”


	4. The Head Hedge

Alice massaged her temples and really it should have been impossible to have an ongoing headache of this magnitude but Kady just Did That to her. 

 

“I’m not saying we need to be filling out requests in triplicate every time someone wants a book with a mention of necromancy but you’re not suggesting I give a grieving widow Hektom’s Necromancer without some basic contact information are you? Imagine if Eliot or Julia came in here and borrowed that book in the state that they’re in and then we have a zombie outbreak in New Zealand but we don’t know that they live in the Upper West Side and have a never ending leave of absence from Brakesville - imagine we don’t know where they came from at all - so we start harassing innocent magicians and hedges in Invercargill and waste months and lose lives. I need addresses Kady, I’m not budging.”

 

It felt good behind the pain, it felt right to have a fight to wake up for every day and if she was honest with herself it felt good and right to have that fight with Kady at least for a few moments - a brief respite from the constant presence of grief. For everyone, for the Order’s expectations and Julia’s guilt and Eliot’s shroud of righteous widowhood she put on her bravest face but with Kady she was Alice the Blonde Bitch. Kady never asked that she be anything but as painfully frustrated and permanently annoyed as she truly was. Alice’s grief was a nasty mean thing and the only moments she could live it outside of herself were with Kady.

 

“I’m assuming you already checked Hektom’s for anything that might help with Que-”

 

“Of course I did,” she scoffed with a dismissive wave of her hand, “it’s a useless piece of shit but that’s not the point Kady. We need library cards - no strings attached - I’m not looking to stop people from getting the books, but I need to know where they’re going in case something happens. I can’t fight the Order and you, Kady. I really can’t. I don’t want to. I need us to be on the same side.”

 

Kady sighed and nodded, “We'll be on the same side as long as we're both trying to do right by everyone who uses magic. This Head Hedge thing they shoved at me, it's a complement to the Head Librarian - we have to work together. Now, a substantial amount of Hedges don’t have legal addresses.”

 

Alice felt at least some of the tension release from her skull, “They can list their nearest HWCC, Julia already agreed and she has plans for at least one in each major metropolitan area. You understand what I’m saying right? If someone tries Vedoliskin’s Comparable and vivisects ten people we have a starting point on where to look for them if they have a relative location attached to their library cards.”

 

“What if all Hedges registered through their Community Center?”

 

“We could give all of them that option,” Alice agreed. She was about to double down on that and how much she really really was on Kady’s side here when it happened. She couldn’t say what it was, she couldn’t even remotely begin to explain it. An explosion of light, maybe; a total blackout, possibly. It could have been anything but it was definitely quick and terrifying and sharp and then all Alice could see was the warm brown cloud of Kady’s curls in front of her, all she could hear was the intake of Kady’s breath and the trembling way it left her. She could tell that Kady was shielding her, protective. If she had enough wherewithal to smile she would have, but she couldn’t. She could only gather the courage to look at whatever Kady thought she needed to be protected from and Alice, she was no fainter, but she clung to Kady’s shoulders like they were the only thing holding her up.

 

“Quentin?”

 

And there was all of him on the floor, looking just the same as he had the day he died and yet not the same at all. With two dark shapes over his shoulders and so many eyes staring back at her; perhaps he wasn't Quentin at all, but a vengeful Angel come to smite them for all they had done and failed to do. One pair of eyes was on fire, she thought, because her brain would not tune in to what she’s seeing.

 

“That one was to kill me,” a small voice said, calm. Amused. Sleepy.

 

“Kady is only startled,” Quentin’s voice answered, soothing and soft while his eyes remain on Alice, “and what did we say?”

 

“That you’ll protect us,” two tiny voices chorused and nothing nothing nothing would ever make sense again. Alice was sure of it.

-

Five cups of tea in, Alice maybe had begun to understand it - the simple impossibility of it.

 

Julia met them at the apartment and fell to her knees and Quentin brushed her hair with his perfectly alive fingers and Julia watched and Kady hovered and the children - the children. Thrust into Earth, into the realm of living humans, had been exhausting to their small bodies regardless of whatever monstrous godliness lived within one of them. They snoozed on the expanse of the couch. 

 

“She has asked too much of you,” Julia whispered once she had composed herself, “Q she can’t ask you to love him.”

 

“It was never going to be easy,” Quentin answered, “and it isn’t just me I think that - I think that we all need to help him.”

 

“He took everything from us,” Alice rasped out.

 

“Not everything,” Quentin said as he stood to wrap his arms around her and Alice couldn’t or wouldn’t but she let him do it, “you were strong and I am so ...so proud that I have been so loved by you Alice -”

 

“I don’t need a speech,” Alice said, but she tried to not be cold she tried to feel anything at all in the face of all of him, “Eliot and I spent...many days together. Comparing notes. You are released from difficult or awkward conversations and I - I get to keep you in my life now. No jealousy and no discussion, I am just as much your first love as he is your...last one.”

 

“Alice-”

 

“I told Julia that I would give anything - that I would give everything. But there was nothing I could give that would have been enough,” she said, with no attempt to keep her heartbreak at bay, “So now that you are here, so now that you’re back - I will do anything, I will do everything. I will help you love him.”

 

“What about the girl?” Kady asked, “she isn’t the sister is it.”

 

“No,” Julia broke in, “the girl is human.”

 

“The girl is,” Quentin started but then stopped and shook her head, “they are mine. They’re the reason I’m alive.”

 


	5. Queen Alice the Wise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this household we stan messy monarchic protocols, victorian widowhood, and meaningful fashion.

“Your Grace.”

 

Tick was nervous, a nervous Tick - that always used to make him smile. The man bowed and Eliot inclined his head and he enjoyed it as much as he could enjoy anything these days, the comfort and the protocol of Fillory.

 

“Her Majesty requires your presence, sire.”

 

Eliot frowned at that, “Fen and Margo aren’t due back for another week.”

 

“Indeed, your Grace, the High King and High Queen remain away. It is in fact Her Majesty Queen Alice who would like to speak with you and of course I would never cast doubt upon our most wise and absent Queen. However, I feel it my duty to inform you that she _is_ accompanied by several hooded companions whom she has refused to identify.”

 

“Aw Tick, you mean you’d find it in your heart to care if Alice were here to kill me?”

 

“Of course, your Grace, without question. I also find it difficult to stomach the mere thought of what would become of me should High King Fen and High Queen Margo return to find His Grace assassinated on my watch.”

 

“Fear not,” Eliot sighed as he rose from his chaise and out toward the throne room, “If Alice wanted me dead no one could stop her.”

 

The truth was that Eliot had never been closer to Alice than in the month after Quentin died. Everyone mourned in their own way and Alice mourned by taking over the Library and working with Kady and Julia to protect and legitimize the Hedges.

 

Her determined grief faltered only once, when Julia in one of her many attempts at botched up resurrections asked Alice to stand in for the one by whom Quentin’s body and soul had fully been held and when that failed miserably - well, it wasn’t Alice he blamed. It wasn’t even Julia. It was their communal emotional constipation that kept hurting them. After that he told everyone everything about _them_ , the whole 50 years of them.

 

Alice and Eliot understood each other in a way no one else could. To have loved and been loved by Quentin, for however long, well - it was something you could never quite explain.

 

Alice was also the only one who had kept up with the intensity and consistency of his Victorian-like mourning.  She was in fact cloaked, but the heavy black material fell around her so that the lowered hood made her bright blond hair shine like a summer sun. When she turned and looked at him it was as if she had turned a page on a book that she had until just then understood but which had quickly transitioned into a language she no longer remembered.

 

“Eliot,” she whispered, both her hands outstretched. She was regal without trying, regal having sat so rarely on her own throne. He took the offered hands and smiled at the crown atop her head. Alice did not love Fillory, but she loved its errant rulers past and present and so, she remained Queen. She squeezed his hands tight and breathed out, “Eliot I don’t have words to say this. I have something so terrible and wonderful to tell you.”

 

“Alice my love, how long has it been? I don’t mean that in a courtly way it’s just really we’re working our asses off to stabilize the temporal bridge between Fillory and Earth and new data is appreciated.”

 

“Six months,” she says, and she does not need to clarify six months since when. There is a before and there is an after, their own little messed up Jesus. Only six months though, they’d either widdle the time difference to a few months or somehow managed to double time Earth - it had been a year for him.

 

“Eliot I… I don’t know how to ask this of you, I don’t know how to say it - so Julia thought it best if we take it in parts if we only showed you -”

 

“Alice,” he interrupted, kissing the hands he held, “six months is a funny amount of time. Six months ago it would have been yes, yes to anything. No matter how little hope in my heart, if you and Julia stood in front of me and said Eliot, there’s a chance, I would have cut out my heart and given it to you if it meant having him back. But he isn’t coming back Alice, and I have Margo and Fen to think of. I have Fillory to live for.

Alice shook her head as she took her hands back, a smile that was nebulous and nervous graced her always somber face. He tilted his head and she unclasped the jeweled scarab brooch of her cloak to show the dress beneath, Fillorian and mid length and so very Alice. The color was a soft lavender.

 

“Alice,” he said as he took her hands in his again and squeezed in a mirror of her motions, “there is nothing to say, you don’t have to carry on with this forever - one mad widow is more than enough don’t you think? Oh Alice,” he hummed as she squeezed her eyes shut perhaps to keep a tear from falling. He pulled her into his arms while her body shook, “He’d want us to be happy, let me fail him miserably on my own.”

 

But her head against his chest was shaking back and forth, no. She was saying no.

 

“Eliot, I haven’t dropped mourning because I’m moving on,” she said softly, “I need you to come with me.”

 

She looped his arm in hers and turned in the general direction of the inner gardens.

 

“Is this about your hooded companions? You know Tick thinks you’re here to have me killed.”

“It was smart to keep Tick around,” Alice hummed pleasantly, “the man can smell a coup three thoughts ahead of its own intention.”

 

“What is this about, Alice?”

 

“What has everything been about for the past however long its been for you?”

 

In the garden there were indeed hooded figures; two large - one green, one blue - and two small -one red, one purple. The little figures huddled together making a pattern of the rocks that surrounded the largest feature of the garden, while the green one stood watch over them and the blue stood in awe of the imposing trees. It hadn’t taken any particularly complex magic to coax the trees to grow twined round each other, it had been no trouble at all with Josh’s gentle nudges. He hadn’t been there at the funeral, he’d said, and after hearing the story of them he thought it fitting. Margo had smacked and then made out with him.

 

“Children,” Julia’s voice called from beneath her green hood. She pulled it off and offered her hands to the little things that looked up from the rocks. The little red one turned back to their play while the purple one rose and dusted off.

 

“Come on,” the girlish voice whispered, “come on it’s the Prince.”

 

The red one dumped the carefully gathered stones in a strike of violence and dusted off just as the other had but not like that at all. The movements were jerky and angry, like there was too much and not enough. A silent tantrum of motion. But then little red took Julia’s hand just as did little purple and they came to him while the person in the tightly held blue cloak leaned on the tree like it might be home.

 

“El,” Julia greeted, and it was hello and I missed you and it was triumph and apology all in one, “I’d like to introduce the children to you.”

 

“Children, this is the Prince of Fillory.”

 

Little purple’s hood had slipped off her bouncing black curls and Eliot felt joy like a bullet in his chest. It made no sense, as he had never been fond of children save for once when he had loved a child with everything he had and more than that. It made no sense but she smiled and curtised with the same well practiced bluntness of his wife.  

 

Julia pulled back little red riding’s hood to show the same blackness and curls, though these were bounceless and drooping like the child had been talked into a bath but not into conditioning or blow drying of any kind. Then he looked up, the little boy that had perhaps walked out of a childhood picture of Eliot's hidden under his mother’s floorboard where his father couldn’t see. Surely Eliot did not remember what he looked like as a child, but he knew what looking in a mirror felt like and he most certainly knew the unnatural shimmer of those eyes. He took a step back as it began to speak.

 

“You weren’t a prince before,” it said, sounding put off, “you were a peasant and then trickster and then a king and then I think, you were a peasant again. And when I found you, you were sad and lonely and not really anyone at all, but you weren’t a prince.”

 

He had taken so many steps back now that his heels hit the castle doors and he knew that he could shout for guards and soldiers and he knew that he could cast a goddamn Rhinemann Ultra and it would do nothing at all because Quentin had gone to the edge of existence and died to get rid of him and it did nothing nothing nothing at all.

 

“They told me I hurt you,” it continued and then it turned to the little girl in purple, the one who was bright and rosy and somehow impossibly undeniably his, “I don’t remember it. They said it was better that way, but that I should still say sorry. So...sorry - that I hurt you. Did I hurt you very badly?”

 

“Yes,” Eliot said, somehow somewhere finding the voice enough to say this, “yes you hurt me very badly.”

 

“How did I hurt you?”

 

“Don’t,” the little girl whispered, reaching out for its hand. Eliot wanted to stop her but the same thing in him that knew her knew that it would be useless.

 

“You locked me away,” Eliot whispered, “somewhere I could not get out of. Except I did, just once. I saw you had hurt someone - I loved. I loved him so much - and because of you I couldn’t tell him.”

 

“Oh,” the impossible little boy who was not and could not be a boy said, “I know who you are. You are _Eliot Eliot Eliot_.”

 

And then the boy-thing did something impossible in its honesty, in the genuineness of the act.

 

He smiled.

 

“Look Quentin,” he said, calling over his shoulder to the blue one who sat at the foot of the tree of plums and peaches that had been planted just for him, “look I found your Eliot.”


	6. Interlude: The Children

Summers looked up at the man in black cloths and bit back a little gasp. She had come awake in a strange place with scared women staring them down and had known Quentin would protect them and not much else of the world besides that. They had whispered and they had traveled and she had known nothing else but Quentin's soft care and the boy's warm hand in hers. But she knew this, somehow, she knew this face. The man had a young face and ancient eyes, he looked just like the boy that held her hand in so many ways, except that the man was tall and regal and leaned on a shining cane as he wept. He seemed fearful, also, in a way that she had never known anyone to be.

Quentin seemed to approach the man as one would a frightened animal, slow and cautious with his arms straight out in front of him.

“Come away Children,” Julia said to them softly, but neither did. They stood still with their hands clenched together and watched the two men in front of them move as if they were both made of wet sand, as if one wrong move would undo them. Summers could see the tall familiar man mouth at words that would make no sounds, eventually she could see that he was trying to say ‘Quentin’.

“Here,” Quentin said so quietly that they both strained forward to hear, “I’m here, I’m here.”

“I didn’t mean to,” the man said after a long struggle for air, “I’m so sorry Quentin I didn’t mean to die. I tried so much – I tried for Margo and Fen. I tried for you, so it wouldn’t be in vain. Quentin I’m so sorry but I’m so glad..”

“You’re not, El, you’re not and neither am I.”

The man seemed to valiantly move forward and try to make more words, but he crumpled like a dry leaf onto his knees instead and sobbed until his whole long thin body shook with it.

“Is he alright?”

Julia squeezed their shoulders and smiled as she looked at Quentin wrapped around the crying man.

“Sometimes… it is hard to know whether you are happy or sad,” Julia stopped for a moment as she watched the two men lean their foreheads against each other’s, “You feel something so big that your body cannot hold it and sometimes it makes you cry. It is always okay to cry, whether you are happy or scared or sad.”

The boy beside her looked up at Julia and nodded. Summers could tell that he didn’t understand. She leaned in close and whispered in his ear.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, “I don’t get it either. Maybe later we can both figure it out.”

The boy beside her remained silent, regarding the two men with confusion until his head tilted and he gave a nod.

“Eliot.”

“What?”

“The one that weeps.”

“They both weep,” she pointed out.

The boy seemed to consider this and nodded, “The one who isn’t Quentin.”

“He is pretty like you,” she answered, “pretty like sad. I know him.”

“How?”

She shrugged and held her hand to the place on her tummy that tugged and jumped warm at the sight of him, “Here.”

When the boy beside her nodded in understanding, she knew that he truly did.

“Here,” he copied, holding his own hand to that place on his belly, “yes. That is where I know Quentin.”

She nodded back and turned to look at the heap of crying men. If she squinted, the cloth around them blue and black, they looked a little like a bruise.


	7. King Quentin the Returned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the interest of complete honesty, I had no clue this was the last chapter of this story until I wrote it. There is more to tell, of course, but that story has a completely different tone. It'll come and it'll be different (lighter! fluffier! kid stuff!) but for that one to happen, this one needed to end. So keep an eye out for Part 2!

Quentin’s cheeks were warm and wet under his hands. Quentin’s body was curled tight and close to Eliot’s own. Quentin’s breath was in his ear as he murmured things that were too sweet to be real. Quentin’s fingers pressed Eliot’s shaking hand under his cloak and beneath his shirt where, impossibly, his heart continued to beat.

“Quentin,” he whispered with his eyes shut tight, “Q if I open my eyes and you are gone again I won’t…”

“I’m here El,” Quentin’s voice insisted in his ear, “I’m swear I swear on anything that I’m here.”

“If I open my eyes and you are gone again,” he continued regardless, “I … I probably won’t be able to do it again. I probably won’t be able to lift out of the grave I made from your old man cardigans and embarrassing threadbare t-shirts. I probably won’t care that Alice will win the mourning game or that Julia will have been right to think me so fucking weak. I will probably care but not enough to stop it, that I will disappoint Margo and abandon her once again. Quentin if I open my eyes and you’re gone again I’m sorry, I can’t promise that I won’t lay down and let the unbearable fucking pain take me. But at least… at the very least, if I open my eyes and you’re gone again I want to know that I told you. I want to know that with a poisonous drop of hope, that you heard me.”

There was silence, deep. Deeper than the space between them. It extended out to the hooded figures that Eliot scarcely remembered. It carried out around the garden Josh had made for him to look at living things that reminded him of dead loves. It poured over the castle and streamed out to their kingdom. Then it ended.

“Okay,” Quentin’s sweet impossible voice said to him, “Okay El. Tell me.”

Eliot took Quentin’s face in his hands and pulled him blindly closer, until their foreheads were pressed together. He took a shuddered breath and then another before he spoke.

“I am a coward,” he began, “I denied…us. I denied our life and our son because I am a coward. We had the chance to do it all over again, Q. It was everything I ever wanted. But I saw you there, looking at me with all that hope and love and… I was afraid. And now I’m… I’m still scared. I will be afraid now and I will be afraid later, but I won’t be a coward. I won’t be a coward ever again. I’m braver now, because I learned it from you.”

The warm wetness fell over his hands and he leaned close, so close, that even with his eyes shut he could see Quentin. He spoke soft and clear and true against Quentin’s lips.

“I love you, Quentin. I love you more than I know what to do with. I loved you jealously when it felt like raw want and I loved you patiently when it felt hopeless and I loved you every day of those 50 years when it felt exactly like magic. I loved you every day after that when I pretended it didn’t feel like anything. I loved you when I opened my eyes and you weren’t there anymore, and I have loved you every minute after that when it felt like I was being skinned alive because you weren’t. And Quentin if I open my eyes and you’re gone again, I don’t know how long I will keep going. But whether it’s another 5 minutes or another 50 years, Q, I will love you like you always deserved. I will love you bravely and forever.”  

Eliot was imagining it, just like he was imagining the living breathing love of his life being close enough to taste and yet, he felt the former silence sweep backwards from the furthest forests and the highest spire down to this – the core of them, the space where they were both warm and alive and could have this.

“Then be brave for me Eliot,” Quentin said against his lips, “open your eyes.”

Eliot’s breath rattled in his chest as he pried his eyes open and found Quentin there, all warm-breathing-alive, all sad eyes shinning with happiness, all lips praying quietly for Eliot to believe.

“Q,” Eliot choked out, half plea and half laugh, “Quentin.”

“I missed you El,” Quentin said through a shaky smile, “I missed you so much that death gave me back.”

“They what?”

“Our Lady Underground, she’s alive by the way, she returned me like a shitty Christmas gift at a department store. Arielle… oh Eliot she was as wonderful as she always was – and Teddy. The baby girls all grown, El, our family is so…so freaking vast. They were all there and so happy that I was too but… but you weren’t, Eliot you weren’t there and even in heaven or whatever that was I didn’t. I couldn’t. Julia, Arielle, they pestered the gods until they sent me back.”

“I… Julia,” Eliot breathed out, aware of her nearby but unable to look away from the sight of Quentin, “Julia I fought you every fucking step of the way and you brought him back anyway.”

“I never gave up Eliot,” she said, sounding closer than expected, “but you never stopped loving him. We each did what we had to do and now he’s...”

“Returned,” Alice cut in, her voice startling him enough to merit a glance following Quentin’s eyes to her.

“It’s a good one,” she said calm as she ever is as she held up the crown that Margo had thrown into the flames. The charring was still evident, but it had been polished and preserved, looking for all their worlds as if it had always been this way, always a melding of scorched metal and smooth silver.

She moved forward and bent low, surprising Eliot by pressing a kiss to the top of his head before she leaned down to kiss Quentin’s forehead. It was soft in a way that Alice never was, but there was nothing in him that could blame her. She lay the crown atop Quentin’s head as if it had been missing to complete this magnificent magic. Maybe it had been, he wouldn’t know anything about it.

“King Quentin the Returned,” she said with all the grace and majesty she carried just as well at a throne as at library.

She rose swiftly and dusted her skirts.

“Children?” she called over her shoulder, only then calling Eliot’s attention to the small hooded figures stood by Julia. Strange and quiet witnesses to a dream he would take a very long time to believe. The little figures looked up at Julia and after a nod from her walked over to Alice, hand in hand.

Alice smiled her always heartbroken smile just once more, before she turned to leave the garden. The hooded children trailed after her and Julia followed them. Alone now, Eliot turned his questioning eyes to beautiful impossible living breathing Quentin.

He didn’t seem to mind the gauntness of his face or his clenched, desperate, disbelieving fingers that still clung terribly to Quentin.

“They’re a long story,” Quentin whispered, his fingertips roaming over the sharp turns of Eliot’s face, “we have time El. We have time now, to tell it.”


End file.
